Management Strategies and Ethical Considerations for Controlling Phytophthora ramorum (sudden oak death): Application to Southern Humboldt County

Humboldt Redwoods State Park in southern Humboldt County, California is a coastal redwood forest, a highly unique and valued ecosystem. It has many social, cultural, ecological, and economic values, including recreational benefits, heritage and aesthetic values, high biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and climate regulation. However, Humboldt County is at risk of infection by the plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, an oomycete which causes sudden oak death. Phytophthora ramorum has had devastating impacts on tree populations in central California and threatens forest ecosystems in the state’s northern counties. It has been reported in Humboldt County, and if the pathogen continues to spread, thereby causing mortality in oaks (Quercus spp.) and tanoaks (Lithocarpus densiflorus), ecosystem stability will be threatened. Due to the many ecosystem services the coastal redwoods provide, it is imperative to mitigate the spread of P. ramorum in this area. This case study reviews the status of P. ramorum in southern Humboldt County and pathogen management strategies, including quarantine, chemical treatment, and stand thinning. By reviewing the literature on how effective various strategies have been at controlling P. ramorum spread, the best management strategies to implement at the study site can be identified. Furthermore, this paper will review ethical considerations of management with the goal of providing managers and policy makers a framework for disease management that considers different landownerships, land-uses, and values. Preventing the spread of P. ramorum in southern Humboldt County is essential to preserving coastal redwood forests and their ecosystem services, as well as mitigating the spread of the pathogen into other counties and states

FRONTIERS IN INVASIVE SPECIES DISTRIBUTION MODELING (iSDM): ASSESSING EFFECTS OF ABSENCE DATA, DISPERSAL CONSTRAINTS, STAGE OF INVASION AND SPATIAL DEPENDENCE

Successful management of biological invasions depends heavily on our ability to predict their geographic ranges and potential habitats. Species distribution modeling (SDM) provides a methodological framework to predict spatial distributions of organisms but the unique aspects of modeling invasive species have been largely ignored in previous applications. Here, three unresolved challenges facing invasive species distribution modeling (iSDM) were examined in an effort to increase prediction accuracy and improve ecological understanding of actual and potential distributions of biological invasions. The effects of absence data and dispersal constraints, stage of invasion, and spatial dependence were assessed, using an extensive collection of field-based data on the invasive forest pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. Spatial analyses were based on a range of statistical techniques (generalized linear models, classification trees, maximum entropy, ecological niche factor analysis, multicriteria evaluation) and four groups of environmental parameters that varied in space and time: atmospheric moisture and temperature, topographic variability, abundance and susceptibility of host vegetation, and dispersal pressure. Results show that incorporating data on species absence and dispersal limitations is crucial not only to avoid overpredictions of the actual invaded range in a specific period of time but also for ecologically meaningful evaluation of iSDMs. When dispersal and colonization cannot be estimated explicitly, e.g. via dispersal kernels of propagule pressure, spatial dependence measured as spatial autocorrelation at multiple scales can serve as an important surrogate for dynamic processes that explain ecological mechanisms of invasion. If the goal is to identify habitats at potential risk of future spread, the stage of invasion should be considered because it represents the degree to which an organism is at equilibrium with its environment and limits the extent to which occurrence observations provide a sample of the species ecological niche. This research provides insight into several key principles of the SDM discipline, with implications for practical management of biological invasions

Interactive Map for caENTI - Application of the Web Mapping Technology.

International audienceGeographical information systems (GIS) are becoming a common tool in applications that involve spatial objects and relations. In the last years the internet technology is moving GIS towards web based applications, simplifying the interaction between users and GIS, and at the same time reducing the ownership and maintenance costs. In the framework of caENTI we are developing a Web Mapping solution to present selected socio-economic indicators of European Union in the form of Interactive map. Indicators will be presented in different levels of detail (from NUTS0 to LAU2). In the time of writing this article Interactive map is still in development phase. The development software has been already selected and tested. However the selection and processing of data and metadata is still not completed. Map built on Web Mapping software GeoServer and JavaScriptbased web applications (including the Map Tools library OpenLayers) are in the final stages of development

Cloud Based GIS Approach for Monitoring Environmental Pollution in the Coastal Zone of Kalutara, Sri Lanka

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used as a powerful tool in many aspects of handling geospatial data. By considering the modern geospatial approaches, this research is focused on monitoring environmental pollution in the coastal zone of Kalutara area, with the objective of identification of existing natural resources. Green vegetation patches, water bodies and beech areas were detected using remote sensing techniques. A detailed GPS field survey was conducted and identified minor environmental resources with various pollution incidents. This information was used to improve the available data sets. The types of pollution incidents were categorised according to the severity level by considering the relationship to each natural resource. Maps were created and data was uploaded to the ArcGIS online cloud platform. Web services were hosted using this cloud infrastructure. Pollution incidents data layer has been given web based editing capabilities for field monitoring using GPS enabled mobiles. Field observations were conducted and locations of the pollution effects were uploaded into web maps from the field with related attributes. The hot spots were used to get better understanding and awareness of the environmental pollution. As the results, pollution incidents were identified and there was a significant effect to the minor environmental elements. The cloud infrastructure, helped to bring down the barriers of data sharing and the incident reporting mechanism became more convenient during the field observations

Internet GIS for Air Quality Information Service for Dalian, China

Since the 1970s, environmental monitoring in China has formed a complete web across the country with over 2000 monitoring stations. China State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has published an annual report on the State of the Environment in China since 1989. The Chinese government began to inform the public of environmental quality and major pollution incidents through major media since the late 1990s. However, environmental quality data has not been adequately used because of constraints on access and data sharing. The public and interested groups still lack access to environmental data and information. After examining the current air quality reporting systems of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Ontario Ministry of Environment, reviewing current Internet GIS technology and sample websites, this thesis developed an ArcIMS website to publish air quality data and provide background information to the public for the city of Dalian, China. The purpose is to inform the public of daily air quality and health concerns, and to improve public awareness of environmental issues. A better-informed and educated public will be more likely to voluntarily conserve the environment in the long run. The development of this thesis can satisfy most basic expectations. However, due to the limitation of current Internet products like ArcIMS, symbology and connection with outside databases are not adequate. In addition some regular GIS analysis functions are not available to Internet GIS products. This development can be further improved to serve other environmental data to the public with better interactivity through coding. Similar Internet GIS products can be used in other Chinese cities to report their air quality data. For internal data sharing and reporting within the government, an open, interoperable distributed GIService is recommended, which is believed to be the future of Internet GIS

The Future of Spatial Data Infrastructures: Capacity-building for the Emergence of Municipal SDIs

Our paper suggests a realistic and sustainable pathway that will enable the emergence of comprehensive municipal information infrastructures, which in turn will support higher-level integration for spatial planning and decision-making at the regional, state, national and international scale. First of all, we propose to target our efforts to the primary locus of spatial change, i.e. the municipality, hence we call the strategy the City Knowledge approach (Carrera, 2004). We believe that the creation of sustainable Spatial Data Infrastructures – where data are plentiful and readily available in what we term a “Plan-Ready” scenario – can be achieved by investing time and effort in the creation of comprehensive municipal information systems (Carrera and Hoyt, 2006). The City Knowledge approach is founded on the premise that urban change falls almost entirely under municipal jurisdiction, and specifically under the purview of individual municipal departments. This paper therefore proposes to “grow” this knowledge from the middle-out, integrating a top-down approach to standardization (Craglia and Signoretta, 2000; Nedović-Budić and Pinto, 2000), with a bottom-up approach to neighborhood-scale ‘atomic’ data accrual (Ferreira, 1999; Talen, 1999). We believe that a web-services approach (Singh, 2004) would provide the technical mechanisms whereby towns will be enabled to accrue and maintain their municipal information in an inexpensive, efficient and sustainable manner. The “middle-out” approach combines the benefits of top-down and bottom-up initiatives, while largely avoiding their respective pitfalls. Thus, instead of proposing a top-down solution to municipal data management, this paper suggests a distributed scheme whereby each department would be in charge of the upkeep of its own urban data, leveraging the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as the platform for intra- and inter-departmental sharing of information. The novelty in this approach lies in its pragmatic, yet systematic pursuit of exhaustive, fine-grained, department-level datasets for each physical structure and dynamic activity in the urban realm, and in the identification of the implementation tools available to municipal governments, as well as of the technical and administrative mechanisms for capturing permanent as well as ephemeral change when it is directly or indirectly caused by official municipal acts